Sports books say they expect strong betting interest in this year’s Olympics, driven by dominant U.S. basketball and soccer teams.
But that very dominance is making it hard to make some bets on those teams without risking far more than you might win on them.
"We expect this to be the most bet-on Olympics in the history of legal sports betting,” said John Ewing, a spokesman for BetMGM Sportsbook, the official odds provider for The Associated Press.
There are several reasons for the anticipated surge in wagering on this year’s Olympics.
The first is the fact that more states than ever now offer legal sports betting in the U.S., currently 38 plus Washington, D.C. Three years ago, for the COVID-delayed Tokyo Olympics, only 22 states offered legal betting.
Joe Maloney, a spokesman for the American Gaming Association, noted that three years ago, 97 million Americans, or about 40% of the adult population, could legally bet on the Olympics in their home state. That total is now 164 million, or 67% of the adult population.
He said 16 states have added legal sports betting since the Tokyo Olympics ended: Arizona, Connecticut, Florida, Kansas, Kentucky, Louisiana, Maine, Maryland, Massachusetts, Nebraska, Ohio, South Dakota, Vermont, Washington, Wisconsin and West Virginia.
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